INDENTING EXPLAINED

I recently received yet another query about the technique of indenting. After answering the query I began to write “see my tutorial at SibleyFineArt.com for…” and then realised that after all these years… I have never written it.

Almost all erasing techniques suffer from a few problems, such as the inability to create pure whites. An erased area will never match the brilliance of an untouched one, and an erased line, however carefully carried out, will never possess a truly sharp edge. And removing graphite from paper often flattens the surface texture, which results in less tooth for succeeding applications of graphite to adhere to. So let me introduce you to a saviour — although not one for the timid, this method produces white marks with clean, sharp edges, and it protects the white of your paper.

Indenting – impressing grooves into your paper that later drawing skips over and leaves as pristine white lines – is an excellent method for creating whiskers, stitches and other accurate parallel-sided lines that suffers none of the faults of an eraser.